---
title: He had lost a battle, it is true, and had been taken prisoner. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He had lost a battle, it is true, and had been taken prisoner. Who acts: Carthage, battle. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Regulus., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of Regulus., sentence 9

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He had lost a battle, it is true, and had been taken prisoner.

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**Who acts:** Carthage, battle · **What happens:** lose, be, take · **To what, where:** battle, prisoner

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Regulus.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Carthage, battle), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg18442:28:9
# text = He had lost a battle, it is true, and had been taken prisoner.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	lost	lose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	battle	battle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	taken	take	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	parataxis	_	_
15	prisoner	prisoner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lose** | past · perfect | Carthage | a battle |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent battle=Eventuality |
| 2 | **is** | present | battle |  |  |  |  | true *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **take** | past · perfect · passive |  | prisoner |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP» |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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